The Solaris Installation Experience

The Solaris Installation Experience: There's a problem with Solaris and Sun knows it. The installation experience of Solaris (along with other areas) could be greatly improved. The installer doesn't "suck" as it's easy and known to Solaris administrators, but for a Linux or Windows user it could prove to be a bit challenging. In the Linux world it's no longer a challenge to install a Linux distribution on your hard drive, especially with the excellent work that the Ubuntu team has done in improving the user experience for a desktop installation. However, in this time while Linux has become just as easy to install as Microsoft Windows (if not easier), Solaris has not really evolved to make the experience easier and attractive to potential customers. After Ian Murdock had joined Sun earlier this year he had begun to expose these weak points about Solaris and how he wants to make sure that Solaris is the "better Linux than Linux" through Project Indiana. Ian views these existing problems of the installation and packaging experience as a "usability gap", which he hopes to address. Over time we have found out that Ian's Project Indiana will be an OpenSolaris distribution that combines the best out of the Solaris and Linux worlds. This distribution will be licensed under the GPLv3, of course. For those of you that have never tried out Solaris, what we've decided to do is to show you this "usability gap" with the installation process in Solaris compared to Linux. Is the experience really that bad?